SOUL ALIVE - Creative | Intuitive | Visionary

Descending the causeway that declines steeply to the pebbled beach, I encounter the remains of Beer’s fishing fleet that still braces the sea every day. Past charming Lillie May, bearing the same name as my grandmother and about the same age too I imagine, I admire her colourful beach garden.

I’m in Dorset here for a weekend of Sumara meditation and dance-movement in the landscape. The plan is to spend the mornings in the studio awakening our bodies and preparing them to move outdoors in less familiar terrains. We round off the day seated in meditation.

I'm now toggled up in outdoor clothing expecting to roll, glide, slither, crawl over damp rocks revealed by the rapidly retreating shoreline. The sun has already broken through the patchy clouds and the temperature is rising. I reach for the zip of my jacket that’s sealed around my neckline and find it won’t budge an inch. I’m trapped inside this waterproof, windproof skin and I've already broken into a sweat on the inside. If this continues I’ll be throwing myself into the cold sea.

And then I remembered the fisherman … sitting outside his stone hut selling the catch of the day. Surely he’d have a knife to cut me loose!

As so it was Alan, captain of the fleet, who came to my rescue but using a large pair of scissors. Quite an intimate operation it was. And thankfully I was saved the large knife that removes the heads and tails of fishes and splits their guts open. In all his years Alan admitted he'd never had to perform this procedure before and alas my jacket didn’t survive the surgery.

Once liberated I join the rest of the group to crunch across the pebbled beach. I gaze longingly at the tea drinkers sitting sedately under umbrellas in the afternoon sun, past Barbara Ann who’s hanging out with the bad boys having clearly thrown in her lot with the pirate boats. Arriving at the far side of the beach, under cliffs strewn with fallen rocks worn smooth as a baby’s bottom, I drapes myself over a sugar loaf mountain wait for the moment when the urge to move arises from within, led by my body and not my head.

At the tail end of the afternoon I wind through a verdant valley of wild flowers towards neighbouring Branscombe. This village is enchanting and quintessentially English. It would seem that thatched roof cottages be-speckled with flowers aren't just reserved for chocolate box covers.

I round off the day with Sumara, the Javanese meditation. Nothing special about how I should to sit in the chair or on the floor - just not lying down. Giving my body plenty of time to settle and come to stillness, feeling my weight drop down through my bones, supported by the chair. I feel like I'm shedding a little more of life's debris.

No need to follow my breath, a sound, or a mantra. Thoughts and feelings come and go as I sit here like this for 45 minutes. If I need to move, cough, mutter, shift position I do so. My mind wants to dance me around but I reign it back in to where I am seated on the chair with my friends around me, accompanied by birdsong. The ordinariness of this is completely luxurious.

On the drive back to Beer I track a deer slowly down the lane until he finds a suitable gap in the hedge. I then encounter an out-of-control bonfire threatening to take the hedgerow with it. I summon a rather drunken homeowner from his deck chair and hope he'll succeed in extinguishing it with his pitchfork without falling into the firey inferno.

If you’ve yet to discover the rural delights of Jurassic East Devon I highly recommend you do so. It’s the perfect place to make a fisherman friend and shed a skin or too.

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I walk along a near-empty beach and find my way to a black rock revealed by the receding tide. Tenderly I lie down on my side and edge backwards so that the length of my spine rests against its face.

My body is laid on damp sand, my knees curled up in front of me and my head resting on my hands. I drift into sleep under the watchful eye of Golden Cap, the highest point on this coastal section of Jurassic Dorset.

The density and stillness of the rock engenders a corresponding stillness in me so that when I awaken I am alert yet my mind is empty. No instructions were given; the wisdom of my kinaesthetic body led me to this and it is nourishing to both my body and soul.

The harsh gaunt cliffs are like sentinels behind me, slumping their mass of black clay into the sea while fossil hunters risk their lives at the foot of them.

Rivulets of clay emerge from the base of the cliffs like molten lava coursing across the sand towards the sea. Shards of sunlight pierce the clouds and spotlight my dance across this rocky tide line. I feel at home here.

This is what Moving in the Landscape means for me. A time when I experience myself most physically alive. A time when I give my body permission to move in response to the immediate natural environment, in this instance the beach. I have three glorious days of this ahead of me, the mornings spent in the studio in preparation for the afternoons when I am moving outdoors.

As my body finds ways to move naturally and organically in this unfamiliar terrain, I discover ways of moving I'm not accustomed to. It’s a terrific workout for my whole body while my mind takes a break from an overloaded routine.

As my rib case expands my breathing deepens and this has a calming effect on my nervous system. My headache has cleared and my movements are no longer dictated by thoughts running through my head. I move with a new-found freedom and vitality. I am present, centred in the very ground of my being and at one with nature.

Have you heard the line from James Joyce's 'The Dubliners'? "Mr Duffy lived a short distance from his body." It sums up this state of affairs perfectly and I chuckle every time I read it.

There isn't anywhere we can go without our body goes too. It is an essential part of our humanity yet so many of us can forget this as we trundle along with a disembodied head perched on a stick (our spine) which bears no relation to the rest of our anatomy.

I run movement workshops to rectify this. I am on a mission to create more awareness of the kinaesthetic body because when we become dissociated from our it, we are weakened physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

My meditative movement practice is called Moving with Mindfulness. I draw on natural movement, which everyone is capable of to encourage our bodily experience of relationship and connection to ourselves, each other and the environment, which is all most empowering.

It's only when we inhabit our body to the same degree we can occupy our minds that we can appreciate what wholeness means.

We spend the morning widening our movement vocabulary and exploring beyond our habitual patterns of motion. We gain confidence in extending our boundaries to occupy the whole studio space and avoid becoming glued to the spot as you do when dancing in a club. This brings a sense of freedom and possibility as we claim new ground for ourselves.

“I enjoyed connecting with the group and a chance to explore my feelings and myself physically. I love Mary’s movement courses and I feel alive and enriched by the experience I have. It fills a need in me to move creatively and with meaning. I leave feeling both grounded and uplifted which is quite an achievement.” Debbie, Adult Dyslexia Specialist.

With our bodies enlivened and attentive through the movement preparation, we take to lying on the floor. In turn and with care, we outline a full-size body print for each other. While inhabiting these body-scapes, Doreen Gowing, Hypnotherapist, leads a guided visualisation to help us let go and drop deeper into our bodies.

We allow plenty of time to colour in our body prints in whichever way we feel fit, intuitively not logically because there is no right or wrong way to do this. The room quickly fills with body portraits and after lunch we tour the gallery together.

In pairs, we take turns to dance for our partner the energy of the body portrait we have created.

“How do I do this?” the head protests while the body knows exactly what dance is needed and how to do it with our partner as our witness.

"The Body Portrait process is unique for gently revealing and reminding me of my inner self. Working with a partner magnified what I knew already as well as throw a light on parts I had forgotten or hidden.” Doreen, Hypnotherapist

Then it is our partner's turn to give their movement response to what they had seen so that when the dance baton was returned to the original dancer, they were inspired to continue moving with it further. What had been resting just below the surface immediately became visible, both in the body portrait and the dance that accompanied it. It was a joy to see and a wonder to be shared and celebrated.

Please check my Events page for the next public Moving with Mindfulness workshop. I'm also available to facilitate this process to any private peer groups. Or if you’d like to explore Moving with Mindfulness with me one-to-one, you can always join me in the studio.

“It was a beautiful and powerful process. Moving together with a partner and having my movement reflected back then interpreting the movement and the body drawing I’d created was very valuable.” C. Barnes, Business Consultant.

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When I attended a 4-year dance-movement therapy training, there was a performer in my group from a prestigious London Contemporary Dance school. Karen had a vast movement repertoire and a highly tuned body. This was her first real taste of dance-movement improvisation however.

During the first module she touched on something through free movement and began to cry. Something that had been buried in her subconscious for years was surfacing but she didn’t yet know what.

As she continued to explore over the months/years so too did she unravel memory of incest that had remained a family secret until now. The trauma now surfaced completely to be released, her shame located and healed through movement, simply by allowing her body to move of its own accord, at its own speed, with its own mode of expression. The result can be more immediate than any verbal analysis.

When Karen later turned her experience into a performance piece, her sister was in the audience. Without providing a verbal description of what her piece was about, Karen conveyed her story through the dance. Her sister received it - through her body - and remembered her own experience of incest that she too had buried.

I don't want to suggest this happens in every somatic movement or dance-movement therapy session. It’s just to illustrate how informed the 'soma' (the inner intelligent body) is.

Here's a more typical experience from Caroline, whose husband bought her a movement session as a present.

“Wow … I want to give a shout out to Mary Nondé. After a 2-hour movement session with her I feel like I’ve had a deep massage and my body is aligned in a completely new way; I feel freed up and relaxed at a whole new level.

“If you’re feeling stressed, stuck or want to be more in your body, I would highly recommend this. It does require you to be open to moving and really get into your body, and to park the old thinking brain for a while. But that was a relief to be honest!”

Caroline Burr, Your Relationship Coach.

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Pina Bausch, dancer and choreographer extraordinaire strikes a powerful chord. Dance is not just about technical perfection which means only a minority should pursue it. It's also about giving the soul a voice through movement. And this practice is inclusive and as old as the hills.

I’m in the throes of learning West Coast Swing. There’s a woman in my class who’s in her late 70s. You’d never believe it to see her move, let alone the way she dresses. She always has a big smile on her face when she dances, while her husband is at home watching the rugby. I’ll wager a bet on which one of them lives the longest.

While I’ll always try my hand at any dance form, the method I believe offers the greatest potential for restoring your equilibrium on all levels has no prescribed form. It’s organic. It’s natural. And has nothing to do with following the prescribed moves of the teacher.

The fastest route to stillness. I currently call my practice Moving with Mindfulness. I used to call it Dancing for Joy. But since we're all very familiar with the concept of mindfulness, it requires only a small stretch of the imagination to see how mindfulness applied to the whole moving body can have a marvelous effect. It's also described as Somatic movement.

It’s the fastest route to stillness, returning you to the inner river-of-life and at a pace and a rhythm that is nurturing for you. And believe me, anyone can discover this for themselves. You don't have to be a dancer to arrive there.

With the impulse to move arising from within, who's to judge whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad; it is as it is. You have total freedom to be spontaneous.

With the subtleties of movement taking priority over getting steps right, this practice creates a bridge to deeper intelligence which is impossible to language through words alone. Carl Jung called this engagement with the unconscious 'the active imagination'. To explore this way is both liberating and delicious - like arriving home to your playful self after a long time away.

Moving with Mindfulness is an embodied practice that awakens your creative spirit and refreshes your relationship with your living, breathing body. As you grow to recognise what it is you feel (through the sensations, intuitions, emotions and instincts that arise naturally), so too your trust in your yourself to know what's right for you grows.

When you over-ride these feelings because you don't understand their value or can't find a file to put them in can leave you disenchanted with life - and then wondering why.

If you'd like to find out more about what moves you please drop me a line: mary@marynonde.com or call 07827017188.

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